


ashes and string and hope

by duskclouds



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alcohol Abuse, Angst, Canon Divergence, Gen, M/M, No Dialogue, canonverse, light spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2015-11-23
Packaged: 2018-05-03 00:42:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5270123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duskclouds/pseuds/duskclouds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He hopes that Mikasa never held him in vain. He hopes that Armin's kisses weren't for nothing. He hopes that Levi's years lead way to a sliver of a future.</p>
<p>He hopes that his meaningless determination does not haunt him when he perishes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ashes and string and hope

**Author's Note:**

> this just sort of came to me one night at 2 AM oops--
> 
> have fun, children

Armin's kisses are just as soft as he expected them to be.

They're delicate, like the boy gifting them. Eren can't say he's not surprised whenever he feels an apprehensive tongue just barely grazing against the ridges of his lips. It's testing, he knows. Testing, and if Eren digs deep enough and analyzes hard enough he can _wonder_ if it's pleading, begging.

If it's forgiving.

Whenever Armin laces his hands into Eren's hair, he returns the offer, calloused fingers clumsily probing around blonde locks and teeth knocking together. And when Armin just barely _pulls_ on the chocolate strands (he tried to pull him out of there he did _hefailed_ ) is when the teal-eyed knows that Armin's structure isn't laced with as many daffodil flurries as they all thought. It wants something more, doesn't want the flimsy tendons it was graced with, wants _needs_ to be able to handle a blade, to slice it down a nape.

To see _real_ blood without the black spots in the way.

Eren tries to let Armin be in command whenever they do this, whenever they sneak into their dorm at ungodly hours (is there a god why would he do this to civilians _why--_ ) and feel each others lips with such fervency it's almost terrifying. Eren wants him to be able to feel the tendons in his own arms strain, to gasp clean air down his lungs, to hold the significance of a kiss in his sternum tight, to stop thinking for moments or hours--

Eren wonders what Armin is thinking when he himself slips down the throat of the Titan.

 

.

 

Mikasa's kisses are like her love for him: there, but existing in another way.

If only she knew how much he really cared, then perhaps the touch of her lips to his forehead would linger longer. When she pulls away (and he thinks he's dreaming whenever she doesn't after three-or-so seconds) the feeling burns, a bittersweet fire spreading over his chest and it makes his blood boil at simmering temperatures. Eren doesn't think he knows why she pulls him close every other night or so, when she gains approval from a commander to slip in between the rusted bars of the confinement and run her hands along his fetters. Every so often her nail scrapes on the rust, and it echoes, and it makes him wince.

He isn't afraid to show fear in front of Mikasa.

He knows she cares plenty, though, with the way her arms bundle him tight like the scarf the color of blood around her neck and holds him to her own chest, and he doesn't want to focus on the curves of her body through the blouse so he can hear her heartbeat instead. It pulses in the night, when the stardust seeps through the cracks of the walls and sheds unforgiving light through the cell, silver and pale like his sister's skin. She's strong. She holds him for a long time, and for a night he's yesterday's child in the past, when he dreamed of his mom every night instead of every other because now his skin is crossed with purple bruises and he can't bring himself to forget to grieve.

It has been five years, and now he grieves harder than ever.

Mikasa understands this, and perhaps this is why she cradles Eren and sends goose-flesh over his skin. And once in a while, her head will crane forward, her neck reaching so her brother can feel the hot breaths that spill from her lips, and she will press those lips to his forehead or his cheek or on the lids of his eyes—but never on his own lips—and he will feel, more than he's ever felt and more than he'll ever be willing to feel.

He wonders how Mikasa feels when he defeats the Female Titan.

 

.

 

Levi's kisses are too savage to even be called so.

They're rough, teeth biting harshly down on lips and mixing blood with saliva when things become too rushed. Things are always rushed with Levi, Eren knows. Even the way he wraps his arms around the taller and pins him down onto the sheets, dragging nails down his flesh and surfacing shining muscle, shows his title clearly.

Humanity's Strongest Soldier and Mankind's Last Hope, carving bruises into the other that won't fade by the thousandth morning.

They're both so ugly with one another, each reduced to the senses of a trapped animal.

Though together they are invincible. A fool would compare them to the Walls that had kept humankind alive for centuries, never breaking down until the last ironic stretch passed the field and they were crushed by the force of the Colossus. They are more invincible than that, stronger and more hopeful than that. A Titan can't break them down if it tried, because they have one on their side, because they are their own walls, they are their own source of protection.

Eren's throat no longer burns when he sees the crimson scarf reduced to a mere lump of tangled string in his pocket. He no longer lingers on the fact that Armin will forever be with him, on his shirt in a reminiscent scatter of ashes that, once upon a time, could have been bones. He's too drunken on worn-out cigars and sips of alcohol nowadays to even consider that his eyes are those of his mother's, the same hopeful smile and softening gaze. He's not even sure if he remembers that his own determination was once greater than the whole squad's persistence.

All he can feel and taste and smell and see and think now is hot breaths and whiskey on his tongue and sickly fire and charcoal eyes and his life with the strongest soldier.

He still has them, though. Those moments between reality and another land where he isn't quite sure where he is or even who he is, and before he knows it he's up faster than he can think, eyes wide with paranoia and sweat coating his body like the hickeys and his breathe caught in his throat like the first time Levi swallowed the exhale. 

Nightmares, Armin used to call them back when they were all eyes shining and smaller feet running excitedly on cobblestone ground to go catch a glimpse of their future selves. Eren can't remember a time when his nights were black and lulling, with no weariness sinking into the back of his mind like an anvil. He's not sure if his nightmares are reality, though, or if reality is worse than his nightmares.

The same thing always happens. At first Levi suspects it's an old memory haunting the kid, as if perhaps once-innocent faces flash in and disturb his sleep like any other rational nightmare. But no matter how hard Levi persists on believing that, Eren knows he's wrong. He won't say a thing, though. The same thing always happens. At first it really is nothing but darkness and a dull roar behind the backs of his eyelids, and at first everything is as it was eight years ago in whatever his town was called. Something that sounds like sing or shin.

He's reminded of the courtroom a few forevers ago, a boot colliding with his jaw and his pearl tooth spiraling and clattering against the floor.

At first it really is nothing but darkness. But the darkness will always give way to light in these things, bright white light that fades into the brilliant violet color of the bruises under the Corporal—Commander's eyes, he reminds himself—and that's what terrifies Eren the most. He's not sure he's ready to see light, and when he tries to cry out to make it stop, the make the screaming and the sun and the pleads stop, a house is fallen and a wall is broken and he snaps awake with his eyes filled with tears for whatever reason. 

Levi doesn't condole him every night. Eren wishes he would, though—that his Commander would hear the choked sobs and find his own way to the room and get on the bed to pull him close like the red string or kiss him like the ashes, but he doesn't. Not every night. A blue moon is rare, and these kinds of actions are rarer for Rivaille. He's too busy with accepting his own fate to give a hell. But Eren manages to push his wishes back into the pit of his stomach where bile always rises from, and turn over on his side to clutch at the sheets and hope.

He hopes that Mikasa never held him in vain. He hopes that Armin's kisses weren't for nothing. He hopes that Levi's years lead way to a sliver of a future.

He hopes that his meaningless determination does not haunt him when he perishes.

He ingrains the reminder of his own death into the ridges of his eyes, into the backs of them and into the teal irises that flash a too-bright amber when they catch the sunlight just right in his form. Eren remembers something like death happening to him (how many forevers ago was that?). He knows that humanity no longer has a chance. They aren't holding onto a thread; each action they make, each worthless string of fight has already cut the thread with the blades they used to take down what has already defeated them.

The promise of wiping them off of the earth suddenly is only as easy to remember as the image of the needle in his arm eight or nine years ago.

He doesn't even remember who was holding the syringe.

**Author's Note:**

> this was a bad idea


End file.
